The United States is trying to remake the world. If there is one thing that the American government learned from September 11, it is that most of the world doesn’t govern properly. America tried to lead by example but the world was too dumb to follow, so the US has been forced to use “tough love” to lead the savages to civility. Our work is beginning to pay off.

One of America’s roles as the boss of the world is to combat certain drugs and plants. Our “War on Drugs” has been waged since President Nixon declared drugs “America’s public enemy number one” in 1969 and the Congress passed the Controlled Substances act shortly thereafter.

Today we spend over $60 billion every year fighting the $200 billion business that flourishes in the streets.

From 1995 to 2003, inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses accounted for over half of the total prison population. Today a record 7 million people, one in every 32 American adults, are behind bars, on probation or on parole, according to the Justice Department. In fact, more people are behind bars in the United States than any other country; and drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available than ever before.

This strategy is now being spread across Central Asia and the Middle East. And the efforts are working. They are finally starting to look more like America.

From the BBC:

Afghan opium ‘hits record output’

Poppy production rose 25% in 2006, a figure US Assistant Secretary of State Ann Patterson described as alarming.

Four years after the US and its British allies began combating poppy production, Afghanistan still accounts for 90% of the world’s opium trade.

The US has recently given the Afghan government more than $10bn in assistance, but most of that money will be spent in security rather than encouraging alternative sources of income.

In other words, the US will spend $10 billion to jail and kill Afghanis associated with certain substances, but little of that money will be used to change the situation. That is the strategy that America has pioneered. We spread it with economic armtwisting when we can, and military might when we must. And we go nowhere.

The drug trade is about capitalism. In Afghanistan, growing poppies is good business. Expecting that they will ignore the business opportunities in opium is like expecting that the Founding Fathers of America would have given up growing tobacco and hemp on the order of King George. Capitalism can’t be contained by decree.

And therein lies the problem. The nation that was founded on commerce is fighting a war that can only be won if the principles of capitalism can be overcome. America is quite proficient at exploiting the marketplace; she has no idea how to squelch it.

Prohibition is supposed to work by increasing the cost of producing, distributing, and consuming certain substances to the extent that they are no longer worth using or selling. Punishment and fear of punishment are both critical components of any prohibition strategy.

As good as this strategy sounds to some, it just can’t work. King George could never have stopped those rebellious tobacco and hemp farmers in Virginia with tax codes, threats, or canons. And the US will not stop others from growing their cash crops with sanctions, threats, or bombs. The only payoff that can be had is that more people will be more afriad of the government that is trying to control them. In that way, even Afghanistan looks a bit like the US.